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Art Fuller is an award winning educator, healthcare executive, and social justice entrepreneur. He's a dad, faith leader, husband, and friend, and he specializes in mobilizing communities towards transformation and change.

 

Starting out as a classroom teacher he gained national recognition for projects that helped connect students to the world around them in new and innovative ways. See, https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/fuller-arthur-1972.

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He integrated these education experiences as an aspiring professional jazz drummer and multi-instrumentalist composer, living outside of New York City and Boston (1994 - 1996). He spent two years learning with the legendary jazz pianist and composer Randy Weston and briefly toured with MacArthur Fellow Anthony Braxton. His educational projects with Randy Weston resulted in a first-of-a-kind creative arts project that brought together middle school students from two cities and socioeconomic backgrounds. These communities had never collaborated before Art's original education design. The project received a statewide award and recognition for its integration of culture from the continent of Africa and the breaking down of stereotypes among racial groups.

 

He then went on to serve as an education advisor for a national professional development company working directly with the CEO and the governing board including a former U.S. Secretary of Education. This company was later acquired by one of the nation's largest education publishers. 

 

For seven years (2004-2011) Art served as a state legislative liaison and fiscal budget officer responsible for the monthly calculation and reconciliation of the state education funding formula approved by the governor-appointed State of Tennessee Board of Education ($3.79 billion annually). His responsibilities included working directly with the Executive Director, Commissioner of Education, Chair of the Board, Comptroller of the Treasury, and Chairs of the House and Senate Education Committees. In this role, he also served as the lead for public policy focused on teacher salary equity, school health, minority teacher recruitment, and college access scholarships for first generation college learners. Art was on the state grant writing team which secured one of the largest federal grant awards in the state's history totaling $501 million for education innovation and reform.

 

During this time, he also founded a national non profit project designed to raise awareness about future careers for college learners. This project secured the participation of over 20 universities and over 100 leading executives. He personally secured interviews with 4 Nobel Prize winning researchers capturing their story of overcoming barriers in the pursuit of groundbreaking innovations. Each one of their journeys started from youth and always involved learning as much from their success as from their failures.

 

Art then created a community-based organization (2009 - 2019) with an initial investment of $2,500 successfully scaling the initiative to secure a $26.8 million long-term facility bond investment. At the time, this was the largest private investment of capital in a nonprofit organization within the region. This team was also recognized as the only agency to meet all benchmarks for diversity and equity related to age, ethnicity, race, gender, and disability among its employees. This organization's impact included recognition by the state as attaining top five percent academic learning gains for its students and serving as a regional hub for supporting English Language Learners. Art's work was also recognized globally as an Ashoka Changemaker School and a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Network of Changemakers for Children's Wellbeing.

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He currently serves (2020-Present) on the executive leadership team of a regional clinic overseeing 600 staff, responsible for oversight of a $52 million budget, serving 13,000 patients (urban, rural, suburban). Art's passion is to work in service of the most vulnerable communities and families. 

 

He has also served as the Chief Human Services Officer responsible for the day to day human resource function for over 625 staff.

 

During the Covid pandemic he led the launch of a first of its kind 24/7/365 crisis center leading to the program’s recognition as a national and state demonstration site funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

https://fox59.com/news/politics/indiana-designated-mental-health-pilot-program-state-by-department-of-health-and-human-services/ 

 

Art is a Hamilton Award Winner (2021) for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Behavioral Health and Individuals with Disabilities. He is also recognized by the National Council on Mental Wellbeing as a national panelist on Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics.

 

In 2024, Art was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Indianapolis to lead a first of its kind national study designed at transforming the behavioral health workforce beginning on college and university campuses throughout the U.S., prioritizing students from communities of color. His project is currently recruiting and mobilizing students across the South.

https://www.perceptionswithimpact.com/

 

As the founder of J Ellington Publishing his leadership academies for youth and adults help families build a better way for a healthier life. He is also an award winning educator that has designed training programs recognized nationally and funded by several of the nation's largest foundations.

 

Art is completing a Doctor of Health Sciences and Master of Public Health degree at the University of Indianapolis, and has an earned B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior from Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) along with an earned M.Ed. in Middle School Mathematics from Lesley University (Cambridge, MA)